Anyone upgrade from 970 SLI to 1080?

So, I made an impulse purchase on an Asus Strix 1080 the other day when I just happened to see them in stock at Amazon. I'm trying to decide whether or not to keep it now though, because after looking at the benchmarks over on TPU, it doesn't appear to be much of an upgrade, especially for the price. I've got a couple Asus Strix 970 4Gb right now running my 3440 X 1440 monitor, and they have been pretty competent at running anything I throw at them as long as I keep AA turned down to a reasonable level and occasionally turn down dynamic lighting and such. Rise of the Tomb Raider is the only game I really want to play that doesn't seem to support SLI, and it appears a single 970 would have a real hard time at my resolution. I would like to get away from SLI though, and the extra 4Gb (4.5Gb if we're being pedantic) would be nice since I'm running a relatively large display. Just curious if anyone else has made the same plunge and how it's working out/why did you do it. I can send the 1080 back to Amazon and wait for Volta, or sell the 970's and keep the 1080. Idk how much I can get out of the 970's, I'm figuring around $350-$375 (they're in immaculate condition), but even then, it's a $300 upgrade. I'm not sure it's worth it or not. Thoughts/opinions?

I just installed a 1080 in place my 970 SLi setup this afternoon actually. So far the difference hasn't been extremely noticeable. I've been able to increase the AA on Hitman, added a few points to my Steam VR test, and boosted my 3DMark score slightly. It wasn't an incredible boost to any one thing but there was some improvement. The main reason I made the switch was the fact SLi support is kind of fading so I said screw it.

It's not much of an upgrade performance wise, however you've also got to remember that with a 1080 you're dealing with:

• Much lower power draw versus two GTX 970s in SLI
• MUCH less heat
• You're guaranteed the performance with every game, not just those that support SLI
• Less overall hassle

I made the switch from two Asus GTX 970 Strix Edition cards to a single Strix GTX 1080 and don't regret it a single bit. If I had to do it again, I would in a heartbeat!

Thanks guys. You confirmed what I suspected as far as performance is concerned, not much of a difference. NoxTek, your bullet points are certainly things I've considered as well, and really, the main things that make me want to hold onto this 1080. I guess the thing that has me still up in the air on this is the possibility of a 1080ti, because then you get all the niceties of going back to single card, and almost certainly, a nice jump in performance.

I made the jump from (2) Zotac AMP! GTX 970'S to (2) EVGA 1080 SC cards. Not sure if it draws half the power but it certainly doubled my frame rates!

The memory increase alone from that 970s 3.5 to 8gb on the 1080 is huge.

I noticed how playable now games were with everything maxed out on Titan fall and doom and others from 980sli to 1080sli. He'll even just a single 1080 made a huge difference just because of the extra needed ram for my 1440 res.

1080 > 970 SLI

Yeah.. that was THE main reason for me. I game @ 4K (Sony 55" x850). Dying Light @ 4K was dying pretty badly when I turned up the eye candy.. lol

thesmokingman said:

1080 > 970 SLI

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Lol, noooo, really? That's stating the obvious. The question is if it's worth $700 for the 1080.

I ended up sending mine back, I'll hold out for the Ti. Just not enough of an improvement for me to justify the cost.

B2BigAl said:

Lol, noooo, really? That's stating the obvious. The question is if it's worth $700 for the 1080.

I ended up sending mine back, I'll hold out for the Ti. Just not enough of an improvement for me to justify the cost.

Click to expand...

Looks like we'll finally get our tis in January. My wait is hopefully over.

Coming from GTX 780 Ti SLI which is in between a 970 & 980 I get better performance with the 1080 FTW. Also much less issues and in my case a huge drop in heat/energy. Unless the game supports SLI very well you will notice a good bump in performance.

Personally I would be surprised if a 1080 Ti is released because it will be too close to a Titan XP in performance for NVIDIA to justify releasing a product.

Not a 1080 but I went from 970 SLI to 980 Ti. Performance was around the same, but less input lag and not having to deal with SLI issues is nice. I'd say moving to a single GPU was a good move, but at least for me moving to a 1080 from my current setup makes no sense.

I went SLI 970 to a 1080, mostly for VR but overall it does feel like an improvement. Single card is nice if you can swing it and if it has the performance you want.

If SLI "just worked", this wouldn't be such an issue.

No wonder Nvidia took SLI down to 2 cards.

It's such a tiny niche that's barely worth acknowledging.